The Maelstrom

struggled all his life to keep it bottled up, to divert these energies and control them until they subsided. But the Old Magic was growing stronger … and in the gae bolga, it had a new and potent ally. Unless Max discovered new reserves of will, this was a battle he would someday lose.

But he would not lose it tonight. Max gazed down at the blade in his hand. It was such a grisly weapon, and now there was blood frozen on its blade, lacing the metal like red syrup. For the moment, the Morrigan’s presence was subdued, but Max knew it was forever lurking, forever poised for its next victim and opportunity. Looking down, Max stared at the body of the last vye. His teeth were bared in a death grimace, the yellow eyes staring blindly at a barren elm. His mount was nearby, quietly nosing about for grass and nettles as its hooves scraped through the crusted snow. Gazing about, Max saw a score of dark, motionless shapes scattered about the shoreline.

He dragged the vyes into the lake, letting the water buoy the bodies until he could shove them farther out. Their armor sank them to the bottom, burying each in a grave of silt and reeds.

The sky was growing light by the time he rounded up two of the great black horses. He had hoped to bring more, but the animals were trained for war, for attacking another’s mount in the midst of a chaotic battlefield. Without a rider to control them, they grew aggressive whenever another stood too near. Max could only manage two. Holding their reins at arm’s length, he led the gigantic horses back into the woods.

Madam Petra was pacing anxiously when Max returned. Their hasty camp was packed and most of the embers were buried beneath dirt and snow. David was bundled in blankets, lying next to the beginnings of a travois so they might drag the injured boy over the snowy ground. The smuggler glanced up, looking utterly spent.

“I’d almost given up on you,” she muttered before eyeing the horses. “They only sent two?”

“Twenty.”

“And they are …?”

“Dead,” replied Max curtly, bending down to inspect Toby. The smee had taken his native shape and was warming himself by a pyramid of embers.

“Don’t fret,” declared the smee bravely. “I’ll be all right and war stories work wonders with the ladies. I can tell them all about how I saved you from going squish!”

Max grinned and crouched over David.

“You changed his dressings,” he observed, examining David’s wounds.

“Did you think we’d leave an injured boy to die in the wild?” the smuggler snapped. “Katarina tended to him all night.”

Max thanked the girl, who merely stared at Max with a glassy, curious expression.

“You killed them all?” she wondered.

Max looked away. “More will come,” he said. “We have to be off and quickly. We’re still much too close to that army. Bholevna’s north of here?”

Madam Petra nodded.

“Well,” said Max, “these horses might be big, but they’re still just horses. You and Katarina can ride one and I’ll take David on the other.”

“So I don’t have to be a steed?” said Toby, audibly relieved.

“No,” said Max, scooping him up. “You’ve earned a ride in style.”

Within ten minutes they were packed and mounted with Max balancing David on the saddle in front of him. The Kosas were clearly expert riders, sitting easily on the great horse and stroking its braided mane. Max noticed Madam Petra staring curiously at him.

“Letting us ride together?” she wondered, a faint smile on her lips. “Not afraid we’ll gallop off?”

Max nodded toward the travois. “Not anymore,” he said, taking up the reins and spurring his horse ahead.

They rode throughout the morning and into the afternoon, the horses picking their way through forests and along snowy streams, cantering whenever it was possible. While David dozed, Toby nestled in the folds of Max’s hood and bombarded him with reflections about casino odds, the meaning of life, and his fondness for baked potatoes.

“But I have to enjoy them on the sly,” the smee reflected sadly. “Otherwise everyone looks at me like I’m some damned cannibal. Why, that goose Hannah once caught me feasting on one and practically—”

“So, what’s the matter with you?” interrupted Max, growing weary of these ramblings.

“There’s nothing the matter with me, sir!” thundered Toby. “Potatoes are an entirely different species!”

“No,” said Max. “What’s injured?”

“Oh,” sniffed the smee, lying back. “It’s my latissimus nub. The right one can flare up whenever I carry something heavy. Nothing a hot bath and some Epsom salts can’t cure. Perhaps Madam Petra can give it a deep tissue massage. I don’t want to boast, but the woman can’t keep her eyes off me.”

Max sighed. The smee persisted.

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” he declared. “ ‘Come off it, Toby old chap—the woman’s merely staring out of revolted curiosity.’ And perhaps you’re right. But I’ve seen that look before, my boy, and it almost always precedes a scandal.”

“Dear Lord …”

The smee was still telling tawdry tales when Max reined their horse to a halt. Madam Petra and Katarina had dismounted up ahead and were standing where the forest opened onto a broad valley dotted with little lakes. The sun was already setting, flooding the west with brilliant bands of pink and orange. But in the east, the sky was strangely, unnaturally dark. There, above the distant hills and river valleys, an amoebic mass was floating like some vast cloud of volcanic ash. It might have been fifty miles away and still it dwarfed the landscape, a roiling storm that flickered with glimmers of heat lightning as dust clouds and debris swirled beneath. A sound carried to them on the wind, a faint but unmistakable moaning.

The storm was Yuga.

~ 10 ~ Knife, Spear, and Storm

The demon filled the eastern sky, so massive it seemed that one could touch her or trail their fingers through her nimbus of black vapors. Despite the fact that she was airborne, there was something uncannily dense and ponderous about the demon’s form and the slow-moving tendrils that protruded here and there like the hungry, searching arms of an anemone. Max wondered if the inky nebulae were the demon’s basic essence or if they shrouded something else within. It was a horrifying and alien creature whose amorphous shape and blind hunger reminded Max of the grylmhoch he’d encountered in the Arena. But the similarities ended there; millions of grylmhochs would not have equaled her appalling size. Yuga eclipsed anything Max had ever seen by such a stupefying margin that a mountain would have seemed infinitesimal by comparison. The demon was bigger than a small country, forever moaning as she devoured all life and energy in the lands beneath her. She was entropy itself.

Max glanced at Madam Petra and her daughter. Holding hands, they simply gaped at the far-off demon. There was not even fear stamped upon their faces, but rather a blank, uncomprehending emptiness. The mere spectacle of Yuga had overwhelmed their senses.

“D-dear God, what a monster!” stammered Toby, peering out from Max’s hood.

“Don’t look at her,” said Max gently. “Yuga’s far, far away yet.”

“Can she see us?” whispered Madam Petra, retreating back into the wood.

“I don’t think so,” replied Max, projecting a calm that he did not feel. “She is still very far from us, Petra. Miles and miles and miles. The sooner we go on, the sooner we find David’s tunnel and get away from her. Katarina?”

The girl only responded on the third call, tearing her attention away from the demon.

“Katarina, have you ever stared at an eclipse?”

The girl blinked. “No,” she muttered. “It would hurt my eyes.”

“That’s right,” said Max. “There’s something in the eastern sky right now that’s like an eclipse. It’s far away